There’s a lot of conversation in the SEO industry right now about what AI can and can’t do. Most of it is worth paying attention to, but there’s a question that sits underneath all of it that I think gets less airtime than it deserves: if AI is handling more of the execution, what does that mean for the people doing the thinking?
My view is that it makes them more important, not less. The quality of the strategy, the depth of the understanding, the judgement calls that no tool can make for you – all of this still comes from people. Given this, the way you invest in those people (not the tools they use) still determines the quality of the work your clients receive.
That’s not a new belief for us at Brick, but it feels more relevant than ever to talk about openly.
Authenticity over perks
There’s a version of “investing in your team” that looks good on a careers page and doesn’t mean very much in practice. Free eye tests, a ping pong table, a vaguely outlined culture of “positive mental health awareness”.
That’s not what we’re talking about.
The businesses I admire most – and one that comes to mind is Timpson, whose entire management philosophy is built around supporting the people delivering the service rather than managing them from above – treat autonomy as the real perk. Not what you give people, but how much trust and ownership you hand them.
We try to operate the same way. The people on our team who are closest to client campaigns are empowered to make calls. They don’t need sign-off to go the extra mile for a client. They don’t need to escalate a decision that they’re better placed to make than anyone else in the business.
A good example of what that looks like in practice: during our time working with NatureMetrics, one of our Senior SEO Executives, Abbi, heard that their CEO was sailing around the world to collect biological samples as part of a scientific study. That wasn’t on the SEO roadmap, and there was no brief for it, but Abbi recognised immediately that it was a story worth telling, brought our Digital PR Executive Luke in on it straight away, and the team ran with it. The coverage they secured included Reuters.
NatureMetrics weren’t even a PR client of ours, but Abbi knew it was the right thing to do for them, made the call, and did it. That’s what empowering the people closest to the work looks like.
A real voice, not a suggestion box
One of the things we do that I don’t think many agencies do is give the team a genuine vote on decisions that affect them.
Not a survey that gets filed away -an actual vote that changes the outcome.
When we reviewed our hybrid working model, we didn’t arrive at a decision and communicate it downward. We asked the team how the existing arrangement was working for them, gave everyone the opportunity to feed back properly, and the outcome – an extra day working from home – came from that process. Not from us deciding what we thought was best.
The same goes for how we spend time together as a team. Christmas parties, days out, where we go, what we do – the team chooses. Because a team day that people actually wanted to go on is worth ten that were planned with good intentions and landed flat.
It sounds simple, but it requires being genuinely comfortable with not always being the one who decides. And I think that comfort – the willingness to hand real ownership to the people doing the work – is what separates a people-first culture from one that just talks about being one.
Training as investment, not obligation
Standing still in SEO is the same as moving backwards. The industry moves fast, and the teams that serve clients well are the ones that stay ahead of it – not just technically, but strategically.
This year we’re sponsoring Brighton SEO and taking the whole team. Not sending a representative, not rotating who gets to go. Everyone.
The thinking behind that is straightforward. If we believe the quality of our team’s thinking is what our clients are paying for, then investing in that thinking isn’t optional – it’s the job. Brighton SEO is one of the best environments in the industry for structured learning and honest peer conversation, and we want every person at Brick to be in that room.
What the team says
“I’ve often commented – as have my colleagues – on how much we value the company culture. We all want to perform in our roles, we all care about our clients and we all want to achieve great things for them, and for the company as a whole. A large part of that is because the business respects and understands that our personal lives are just as important as our professional ones. Hardship in one often leads to hardship in the other. Life happens, often unexpectedly, and the genuine understanding of the need for flexibility – without implied negativity of ‘impact to the business’ – has gone a long way to engendering a deep-seated respect for the company. In this same vein, feeling as though my thoughts and ideas are genuinely heard, valued and taken into consideration has encouraged me to take a larger interest in the business as a whole – as something to invest time and thought in, rather than just a means to an end.” – Luke, Digital PR Executive
“No two days look the same at Brick, and honestly, that’s one of my favourite things about it. We’re given the creative freedom and confidence to back our own strategies, try things out, and genuinely own the work we’re doing, and that makes a real difference to how invested you feel in the outcomes. When a client win comes in, it means something, because you know the thinking behind it was yours. What makes it even better is that you’re never doing it alone as we’re constantly sharing ideas, collaborating, looping each other in on experiments, celebrating the wins together and being honest about what didn’t land. Everyone at Brick genuinely cares about doing exceptional work for our clients and learning something new everyday, and that energy is contagious. It encourages us all to think harder, keep up with trends, try more strategies and keep raising the bar in SEO and AI Search.” – Abbi, Senior SEO Executive
Why this matters to the people we work with
This isn’t just an internal story. As Luke’s comment proves, the way we invest in our team has a direct effect on what our clients experience.
When people feel trusted, supported, and genuinely invested in, the quality of their thinking reflects it. The strategic insight that makes a real difference to organic performance doesn’t come from people who are going through the motions. It comes from people who care about the work and have the headspace to do it properly.
We also invest in our systems with the same intention. We’re using AI to build and retain institutional knowledge about every client we work with – the nuanced detail about their business, their market, their history – so that it lives within Brick, not just within individuals. That means whoever is working on an account at any given time has access to the same depth of context and can deliver the same standard of work. The knowledge doesn’t walk out of the door because it was never just sitting in one person’s head.
For clients with complex businesses, long sales cycles, or campaigns that have been running for some time, that consistency is worth a great deal.
Come and find us in Brighton
If you want to see what a team that’s genuinely invested in looks like in person, brightonSEO is a good place to start. Since we’re proud sponsors of the event, the whole Brick team will be there. We’d love to talk – about the industry, about your business, or just over a coffee.
